I recently attended an integrity seminar and it focused on how many people are lacking when it comes to it. People lack integrity in their careers, relationships, financial weath, health, etc., and because of this, these areas are not working for them. Without getting too deep into the seminar, I will tell that I met at least five participants that were either musicians or composer/songwriters and they were all saying the same thing. Basically, they don’t write and they don’t practice. They have become secret musicians and no one knows that they are even involved in music.

One person I talked to admitted that he was a songwriter only after I mentioned that I was one. He told me that he didn’t feel the right to say he was a songwriter because he never writes. Yet, I could see just how much pain he was in because he realized that he doesn’t write and he really wants to. Whatever the reason that he doesn’t write is not as important as beginning to turn around the thought in his head that he is not a songwriter. I told him to say it. He needed to admit to others that he was a songwriter. There’s no need to get into the excuses as to why he doesn’t write. The more he says he is a songwriter, the more his mind will believe it and he will began writing on a regular bases.

It’s the self-talk that influences the actions that we take. This person I met in the seminar got himself into a rut, and he let his passion for songwriting go into the background. The problem is that it doesn’t work for him to let this happen. He is not happy and he is not functioning properly. Speaking things into existence has been talked about in many books including a lot of religious text. This idea is nothing new. Words are very powerful.

So if you are a secret musician and you want this to change, the first thing you must do is speak it into existence. Tell people what you do. Tell as many people as you can. If they ask if you have anything for them to listen to, tell them that you will have something very soon and put a deadline so they can hold you accountable.

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By Michael Laskow

I love to read business books — especially marketing books. One theme that is repeated throughout many of my favorite marketing books is that you (or your product) need to represent just one thing. If you can’t describe what or who you are as an artist in a single, succinct sentence, how can you expect anybody else to?

Why does that matter?

Imagine that you’ve just discovered a new artist that you’re absolutely head over heels about. You tell a friend. The friend responds with, “What do they sound like?” If your answer is, “I can’t really describe her,” there’s little chance your friend will run out to buy the CD.

On the other hand, if your answer had been, “She sounds like Lucinda Williams meets Sheryl Crow,” then your friend would immediately have a mental picture and be able to decide if that type of artist would be appealing enough that he would go buy a copy.

I’m not saying that you need to change your music. I’m suggesting that you find a way to label it or describe it in such a way that it makes it easier for word of mouth to work in your favor.

And while we’re on the subject of word of mouth, I’d like to publicly thank TAXI member Mary Beth Maziarz for sending me the book, “The Tipping Point.” It’s a very popular business book that explains what makes something “tip” and become the type of thing everybody is talking about. One of my favorite examples is the huge spike in sales that Hush Puppies experienced in the mid-nineties.

It was essentially a dead brand, but because a handful of influential, young New York “hipsters” rediscovered Hush Puppies, other people who wanted to be hip talked about the shoes, and most importantly, they bought the shoes. The scales tipped and sales soared.

Central to this theme is identifying the “sneezers” as best-selling business author Seth Godin calls them in his book, “Unleashing the Idea Virus.” Sneezers are simply people who are influential — people who other people look to for advice and recommendations.

If you were going to buy a new guitar, who would you talk to other than the sales person at Guitar Center? Your friend Bobby from the band The Viral Evangelists? Yes!

Why?

Because everyone knows that Bobby is really cool. He’s been around the music scene forever, and he always seems to know what the next big thing is. Bobby is a sneezer. He’s a marketer’s dream. He’s a guy with influence and a large audience of fellow musicians that he can infect with his enthusiasm — be it for a guitar, the next hot band, a new Pro Tools plug-in, or his favorite recording studio.

Your job is to identify the sneezers who can help you infect lots of other people with the idea that your music is great. Who are the best people to proclaim “You’ve got to check out her CD, it’s incredible!” Your aunt Nancy? Who is she going to tell — the ladies in her gardening club?

If you’re doing Country music, then a great sneezer would be a DJ at a small Country station — more approachable than a DJ at a huge station, but still has thousands of listeners under his influence. Why not 50 DJs at tiny little Country stations all over the South?

If you’re doing atmospheric New Age music, then your sneezers might be people who work at health food stores. You might also give it away to massage therapists who will then play it for countless clients while they work on them. If the massage therapists comment about how much they like your CD, then why not give them some copies on consignment that they could sell to their clients? That’s marketing!

The big hurdle that you will need to overcome is motivating your sneezers. You want these people spreading your “germs” like a virus in an overcrowded elevator. But it’s always been my experience that you can’t really motivate anybody. They’ve got to be motivated from within.

Think about it for a minute or two. Remember when your parents tried so desperately to get you to study hard when you were in high school? Did their prodding or exhortations motivate you? A big, fat “NO!” on that one, huh?

But what about when you first discovered music. Did anybody have to motivate you to listen to music every chance you had? Of course not. You were self-motivated because you derived pleasure from listening. You received a benefit.

The same will be true for your sneezers. For them to be successful at spreading your virus, they’ll need to be self-motivated. And what will motivate them to tell everybody they know that your music gets “Two Thumbs Up”? Great music! That’s their benefit. They get to enjoy it, and they get to look like geniuses for recommending it. It always comes back to the music doesn’t it? You can try every trick in the book to get people to buy your CD and go to your shows, but if the music is just good, not great, you probably won’t succeed. However, if your music is exceptional, it will practically sell itself.

From where I sit, that’s true for almost any aspect of life. The more passionate you are, the more motivated you will become. If your motivation level is high then you are likely to become exceptional. Once you become exceptional, the more likely it will be that people will be attracted to what you do. If you attract enough of the right people, they will spread the word to others and your “virus” will spread like measles in Mrs. Taylor’s fourth grade class.

You really are the master of your own future. I just used a little marketing lesson to help you realize it

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